Why America’s fired up about hemp

Hemp: It’s not just for health food smoothies and hippie clothing. The unintended victim of the United States’ prohibition on cannabis — it got swept up in the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 and is now blacklisted by the DEA under the Controlled Substances Act — the plant is beginning to be seen by many as the solution to any number of the country’s problems, with implications ranging from energy to agriculture. Newly liberated (to an extent) by the recently passed Farm Bill, it could be the country’s next billion-dollar industry, journalist Doug Fine told Salon.

It’s one of the few areas on which Fine, who’s previously written books about marijuana legalization and an experiment in off-grid living, can find common ground with Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

“Hemp Bound: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Next Agricultural Revolution” is part manifesto, part documentation of the ways in which hemp is being put to use within the U.S. and around the world, and part how-to for would-be cultivators. Fine spoke with Salon about hemp’s former role in U.S. history, the declining stigma against all kinds of cannabis and the people leading the new hemp movement. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.